wolc123

Have they ruled out reopening ? I heard that the fire damage wasn’t all that bad.

I enjoy the winter and could never survive south of about Gettysburg PA. My Aunt, next door, has been spending winters in your area of GA with my cousin, since my uncle passed away, (3) years ago. He also liked NY winters. I prefer these real old-fashioned pre global warming winters more than the mostly lame ones that we’ve had since the early 1980’s. If I knew for sure they were going to continue a while, I’d look into getting another snowmobile. The last one I bought was a new 1997 Polaris XCF. After about the 3rd almost snowless year, around 2010, I finally sold that. Our winters have been so lame the last few years, that I haven’t even owned a registered 4wd vehicle the last (5). I am thinking of registering my Dodge Durango field car prior to next winter though, especially if it’s looking like it’s going to be another old fashioned snowy cold one, like we’ve had this year. I took that bastard for a spin out through the frozen snowy fields last week and it really did well in the deep stuff. It would be nice for running back and forth to work on the snowier days.

We were up to about another 8” today and I just finished plowing our two driveways and my aunts next door (took about 1/2 hour with my bigger tractor). My mom called when I finished and said visibility is bad over there (about 20 miles to the south east) and she doesn’t want me driving over. A local guy plows it for them for $30 a shot with his pickup so she’s calling him. He only does the one little driveway by their garage. I’m going over there Tuesday night anyhow, to pick up their suv for inspection at my buddies shop and for dinner, so I’ll clean everything up good with dad’s tractor while I’m over there then. The 8” of additional snow that we got later today would have been a bit much for my Farmall Cub. It probably would have taken me a couple hours to have cleaned all that up from the three driveways that I just did. The low fuel light started flashing on my tractor 2/3 of the way thru. Fortunately, I had a 5 gallon can of winter mix diesel in a can in my barn. Several of my buddies with bulk tanks have reported fuel freeze and gel issues this winter. That’s why I like getting it in 5 gallon cans. I still add a little power serve, from the white bottles, to each can in the winter. I use the performance mix with injector cleaner in the grey can the rest of the year, and have never had a fuel issue with my diesel tractors.

I am also very thankful for the way God answered my prayer on that buck (thanks for reminding me about that). After I missed him with my crossbow in November (wasn’t sure it was a clean miss because I never found my bolt). I prayed that “God’s will be done” regarding the carcass recovery. Little did I know that He’d make me wait a month for that “follow up” shot with my ML on that Tuesday evening, one minute before sunset. That was pretty sweet because it was much easier to deal with the carcass in the cold weather and faster to process with less fat to be trimmed post-rut.

I definitely prefer the taste of whitetail deer over beef and pork and certainly over chicken. It has nothing to do with money for me. After pretty much being raised on farm raised domestic animals and birds (mostly chicken), I haven’t paid cash money for a chicken dinner since I moved out of my parents house.

I had a similar situation going on, but only with a few inches. All level ground here, which makes things much easier. I was wishing that I had plowed last weekend at home, but I skipped it. I wouldn’t have, if my Farmall Cub was still running. It was cold all week and finally got up to 33 yesterday evening. It snowed about 4” overnight. The 2 “slightly thawed” inches below and fresh fluffy 4” on top all peeled off pretty easy with the plow on back of my bigger tractor this morning. We’ve got a couple more inches of fluffy stuff in the driveways now and it’s still falling very lightly. I’m going to plow it again at around 4:00, then drive over to my parents and take care of theirs with dad’s cut. It’s still fun plowing snow with the two John Deere tractors that I have at my disposal. Especially in the daylight on the weekend.

I certainly did mess up there, on a big doe last Holliday season. If only I had used my laser range finder, I wouldn’t have taken the 200 yard shot, that I thought was 150. My bigger mistake on her though, was trying to save some meat, on a neck shot vs a center of mass finishing shot, when we tracked her into her bedroom, after wounding her in the leg with my initial shot. Talking to my neighbor at church this morning, it sounds like she’s healed up pretty good from the leg wound that I inflicted on her last December. I had a feeling she’d be ok, based on the 5 miles or so of terrain that she covered, as we tracked her after I “clean missed” that follow-up shot. He was in the cabin back in his woods yesterday, when he got an alert on his cell phone. One of his cameras picked her and her grown fawns up. She was doing well, completely recovered. She will be tougher to kill now for sure. Maybe I can get her this September, with the new Savage 220 that I hope to pick up. That should give me a legit 200 yard effective range. I’d definitely put that at about 150 with my Omega 50. It certainly had no trouble double lunging this guy at 125 yards last December, landing the bullet right where I wanted it: (32) Old does are much smarter though. It ain’t going to be easy, getting the best of that old battle worn one. Edit, I certainly wouldn’t have taken that ill-fated 200 yard shot with my Omega, were there not still way too many deer around here and had I not struck my first with my suv, getting its first dent, just a week prior. I’m down to shooting at any legal deer, if I think I have a 75 % chance of a clean kill since that, where I needed about 90 % certainty prior. I definitely owe that fine photogenic 3.6 year old 8-point buck to the new deer shoulder sized body line on the passenger side fender of my suv though. Without that, I never would have rushed home from work and got up in my stand on that last Tuesday of regular ML season.

Even though we seldom seen eye to eye, I’ve always appreciated your insights. One of these days, we’ll have to meet up at the Brewer Union Cafe or someplace else in the neighborhood. Too bad it looks like the Longway diner shut down. I always wanted to check that out.

I’d rather be getting it in feet now that my Farmall Cub is broke down, but we’re still getting it in inches, here in northern WNY. Lake Erie is frozen solid now, so no more lake effect for us.

I’d like it a lot better if my Farmall Cub plow tractor hadn’t broken down on the last snowstorm. That thing is a real joy to plow snow with, and it’s so small, that I can really “stretch” the fun time with it. This has been a real old fashioned winter, like we haven’t seen in these parts (north western NY), since the early 1980’s. Unfortunately, that Farmall Cub breaking down has also shut down what I was hoping would be a little winter firewood processing. My splitter shed was open and ready for business, but I had to push the dead Farmall into that space, with my larger 4wd John Deere turbocharged diesel loader tractor. Thankfully, the plow was up on the Cub, when it quit running due to an unknown electrical issue. Now, I don’t have any inside space available to haul wood into for splitting. Frozen ground time of winter, had been my favorite time to make firewood, back in the good old “pre global warming” days. I was going to take the rear snowplow off of the John Deere, put the forks on the bucket, and start hauling up logs from the woods and hedgerows. Now, with the busted Farmall Cub and Ford 8n (also has an unknown “no spark electrical issue), there will be no time for that until summer, as has been the case most of the last 40 years. Mt “lowest ground in the area” is usually way to muddy to drag and move logs on, outside of mid to late summer. The very best thing about owning a Farmall and a Ford Tractor, is the appreciation that they give me for having a few John Deere’s around, to get the actual work done. They also provide good entertainment in the shop, trying to keep them running. I cleared our two driveways and my aunts next door, with my John Deere this morning, before church. It cleared up pretty good for that, but now snow is coming down good again with low visibility. If it clears up before dark, I’ll head over to my parents, about 29 miles away, and clear there driveways with one of dad’s John Deere’s (a compact “Yanmar powered” version). That had an issue with a chain rubbing on the rear fender, but I added some wheel spacers and got it working wonderfully, a couple weeks ago. It’s about the same size as my Farnall Cub but no where near as fun to plow snow with (I get a bit of a stiff neck with the rear plow compared to the front one on my Farmall), and the operators platform is sized more for smaller Asian folks. That little Yanmar diesel sure does run like a watch though. They have a gas well on the property over there, so they've always got free natural gas and dad keeps the tractors in a shop heated to 60 degrees all winter. That makes for real easy starting in the winter. At home, I keep my John Deere diesel plugged into an electric block heater and run that at least a half hour prior to any cold starts. I’m holed up in the house now, enjoying a good book in front of the wood stove, where it’s 75 degrees and very pleasant: I’ll warm up some leftover chicken pot pie for lunch shortly, and maybe head over to ma and pa’s for some more snow plowing, if it clears up before dark. My wife made the pot pie for dinner last night, and she headed down to her brothers place in VA for the week, before church this morning. She left plenty of leftovers for me and our daughter, but we’ll be making something on our own, by weeks end, I would guess.

The whole “challenge yourself” deal seems counterintuitive to me. I think we owe it to the deer to kill it as humanely and quickly as possible and that sometimes means minimizing the personal challenge to ourselves. I will always choose the most lethal, reasonably cost, legal weapon available, in a given season. That said, there is no doubt that sound is one of the primary concerns when hunting and that creates a space for archery equipment for deer hunting. In that area (archery season), I will always choose the most lethal, legal combo available (a crossbow with mechanical broadheads) even though it is currently legal only during the peak two weeks of the rut in NY’s southern zone and (3) earlier days in the northern zone, for most able bodied hunters. Several years ago, a former site member posted the results of non-biased study, based on archery deer hunting on a private vast expanse of military property, which clearly showed evidence of the “clean kill and recovery” superiority of the crossbow / mechanical broadhead combination compared to other combinations, including vertical compound bows and fixed blade broadheads. I’ll admit that I often fight a personal desire to bring out my old open sighted sidelock muzzleloader, with which I’ve never been able to harvest a deer, and use it during our current ML seasons. So far, I’ve been able to successfully fight off that urge, since obtaining my scoped inline. One of these days, If my meat supply is good and I still have an unpunched dmp tag or two by January 1. I just might not be able to resist the temptation of giving it a try. Until then, I’ll stick with my fully legal in all current ML seasons in NY, in-line 50 cal TC Omega with 2-7x Redfield scope. (31) I do appreciate the fact that NY does allow an early antlerless gun, early archery, early ML (in some areas) middle gun, and late ML season. I think the long run and “breaks” in between allow for a greater overall deer harvest which helps both the deer themselves, as well as the deer hunters, and even more importantly, others including motorists, homeowners, and farmers. Personal challenge is best left for sporting events that don’t involve God’s living creatures.

I’ve caught a few bass with jigs made from coyote tail hair but it seems like those made from buck or doe tail hair always work better.

Certainly, but only if it was free. I can usually kill enough deer, to keep my family relatively well fed currently, for very little cost.

Speaking of hunting related content, this photogenic 3.6 yr old 8-point, that I harvested on a food plot on our place on 12/17/24, made one heck of a tasty neck roast. Maybe the best I’ve ever had. I hung the buck in our insulated garage at 40 degrees for 9 days, prior to processing and freezing. The neck roast wouldn’t fit in a quart sized vacuum bag so I froze it in a one gallon ziplock bag. I placed the frozen roast, taters, onions, a packet of Amish powdered beef gravy mix, 12 oz of Genesee black cherry vanilla kellerbier, and 6 oz of tap water, in the slow cooker for 12 hours on low. (30) It was spectacular for dinner last night and so were leftovers for lunch at work today. Now I’m kind of wishing that I hadn’t ground the rest of that buck, except for his back straps and tenderloins. I’ve also got (3) quart packs of his liver and his heart left out in the freezer. I’d try cooking his heart that way, but then my wife wouldn’t know what to do for me for Valentine’s Day tomorrow (she always pickles my previuos year’s deer hearts for me then, along with a beef tongue or two). As far as the site arguing goes, I enjoy both and each has plenty to offer. Fast Eddie is awesome and deserves an all time best moderator award if anyone ever does. I never had any trouble from the absentee owner and even the antler deer rancher is good for an encouraging word, when I really needed it (like the year that I got stranded out west and I missed my only opening day of gun season ).

I hung mine up in 2014, when the crossbow was first legalized, for the peak two weeks of the rut in the southern zone. I still have my last (2) compounds, but haven’t touched them since. Way more efficient for me for sure. I’ve killed more deer, hunting just those (2) weeks of the season, the first (5) of those last (10), than I did the previous 30 years with my vertical compounds, hunting the whole seasons. It’s almost all about the meat for me though, and I haven’t killed any with my crossbow, since they opened and early antlerless gun season in my home zone, (5) years ago. I stopped fighting so hard for “full inclusion” when they gave us that early gun season. Im actually thankful now that we didn’t get full inclusion, because that might have prevented that early gun season. I haven’t had any significant struggle to get enough venison since then. Antlers mean very little to me. The peak two weaks of the rut is still one of my favorite times to deer hunt though, so I’m very thankful that I can use my crossbows then. it provided some excitement last year, when I missed this stout 3.5 yr old 8-pointer on the last Sunday of that 2week crossbow season. (26) I could not locate my bolt after the errant shot (probably deflected due to predeployment of mechanical broadhead against popup blind window mesh), and I prayed to Jesus, that “His will be done” regarding carcass recovery. Not only did He answer my prayer, just like He always has, He did better than allowing an immediate recovery. It would have been tough dealing with that carcass on that 70 some degree Sunday morning, and still make it to church. He guided my bolt safety away from the buck, not even nicking a hair. I didn’t see that buck again until the last minute of daylight on the last day of ML season, when he offered me a broadside shot. The temperature was just right in late December, for hide-on carcass aging, in our insulated garage. By that time, there was a lot less fat on the carcass, so processing went significantly faster than it would have, had my bolt struck where I intended, over a month before.

Same here. I just found out that my wife is heading down to her brothers place in VA that weekend, so our trip to her parents place up north is off. I’m not sure if we’ll get back up there before Memorial Day weekend.

No but he had a pretty cool hairdo.

No boiling, I just skin the raw head and power wash it. The skulls get too yellowish for my liking, if they are boiled.

It takes me 45 minutes and 2/3 of a gallon of gas to do one from a raw head. 15 minutes to skin and 30 minutes to blow out all the soft tissue with a 3100 psi pressure washer. I like the natural bone color, from the raw method, more than the slightly yellow look that results when heat is used, or bleached white or various dips. Cleanup is the best. Just blow the offal to the edge of the concrete pad and the vermin and birds take care of it overnight. Another big plus is no smell and less nagging. I’m surprised that my mother and wife didn’t run me off, after the ones that I did on their stoves.

Happy birthday.

It’s just crazy to me, how fast they adapt to changes. Our home farm consists mostly of small 3-4 acre fields, separated by hedgerows. The first year I doubled my effective range, with a bolt action rifled shotgun, I killed (2) does one field away. They never knew what hit them. That action went away the very next year. The extra half hours we got (4) years ago is another good example of that. The first year it went into effect, the deer action was great in those extra 1/2’s. Not so any longer. Now they don’t come out into the fields until at least 2 hours past sunset, and they vacate at least that long before sunrise. I don’t think there is another creature on the face of the earth, that adapts better to survival around humans, than the whitetail deer.

I’ve got a bunch of unsplit rounds in my splitter shed that I’d like to get split up and moved into my woodshed. Also maybe drag up a few firewood logs, and some rabbit and squirrel hunting.

This old Adirondack doe was the smartest deer that I’ve ever hunted. Certainly way ahead of most of the mature bucks that I’ve taken. I pursued her for several years. Im guessing that she was 4-1/2 years old, when I finally managed to bring her down. Our first encounter was during the late ML season, when she was probably 2-1/2 years old and had a single fawn. I should have had her that time, when she offered me a 40 yard broadside shot. A hidden branch deflected my ML bullet, and saved her. She had (2) fawns the next year, when she managed to thwart me on every attempt during the early ML week. She usually fed in the shooting range meadow, near my in-laws lake house, every evening. She seemed to recognize the danger and patterned me, getting the best of me 2 or 3 times that week. She did the same on our first encounter the following year. I had learned that she always went up to a ridge to feed on nuts, after she left the meadow. I got up there before her, about a full hour before sunrise, the last time. I had a favorable wind and I was able to get into position up there completely undetected. She usually always monitored the lake house door, just before sunrise. My extra early rise tricked her. As the sun started to light up the woods up on the ridge, I caught some flash of her white tail. She held her tail out, then moved about 50 yards, then repeated the process, getting closer and closer. I was downwind of the best mast trees up there. She eventually offered an easy, broadside 30 yard shot and I was able to connect with her shoulder blade. It was only after she was down, that I saw the two fawns which she had been signalling with her tail and masterfully leading up the ridge to the food. I may have started the whole process over again last year, on what was probably one of those fawns. I missed her with the same ML, in almost the same place where I missed her mother, due to the same cause -probable branch strike. This time, it was during the early ML week, and again the doe had just one fawn with her. It’s pretty cool how history repeats itself. Only one, of the dozen or so mature bucks that I’ve killed, has particularly impressed me with his smarts. Most of the rest were easily outwitted during the peak two weeks of the rut. That one smartie was hanging with a flock of turkeys, likely taking advantage of their superior vision, to help evade hunters. God Himself assisted me on that one causing me to drop the Bible I had been reading up on my stand. I climbed down from my tree stand (leaving my 16 ga slug gun loaded) to pick it up, with 5 minutes of legal light remaining. I was wearing my orange camo jacket which that flock of turkeys could have seen from a mile away had I still been exposed up in that stand. They didn’t do this cagey old 8-pointer any good, when they and he stepped into the little patch of brush under my tree.

My 3.5 yr buck from big blinds ticked up by one on December 17, 2024 with this one, which was also the first one that I killed from a big blind, outside of the peak two weeks of the rut: (23) That was also my first kill from this poplar tree blind, from which I had missed a doe a couple weeks prior and a 2.5 year old buck the year before, due to what I believe was a shotgun/sabot slug/cold weather malfunction. A dead ash tree had fallen against it and I dropped and processed it into firewood the day before I missed the doe. She was the only deer that I seen, thru all of shotgun season last year. I think the chainsaw noise and tractor ruckus the day before coaxed her out of the heavy cover. That didn’t do me any good though, because I missed her clean. The buck wasn’t so fortunate though, when he stepped out in the exact same place a couple weeks later. Fortunately, I had my ML that time.

I once killed a button buck from my bedroom window, 2 minutes from the end of ML season. That didn’t feel much different to me than the 8-pointer, that I killed from a tree stand out back, at almost the exact same time last year. He had just stepped into a food plot but was not eating when I shot him. I did have a little (33 minutes) more time until the end last year (thanks to the recent rule change on start/stop time) and a little more cushion on the setback distance from buildings owned by others.